


Manual Override

by Mizushimo



Series: The Helmsmechanic [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Sgrub Session, Awkwardness, Benign Tentacles, Bickering, Bondage (harness related), Bulges and Nooks, Comedy, Dirty Talk, Drone Season, False Starts, Fingering, First Time, Helmsman Sollux Captor, M/M, Magic Mist, Oral Sex, Sex Pollen, Snark, Trust Issues, Vulnerability, Xeno, all trussed up and nowhere to go, blindfold (harness related), karkat is a card carrying member of the helmsman preservation society
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-13
Updated: 2016-08-13
Packaged: 2018-08-08 12:27:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7757860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mizushimo/pseuds/Mizushimo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The drones are here. Helmsman Sollux's ship is saturated with pheromones and he's just about to go screaming half way around the nebula and back with frustration when his trusty Organiengineering Technician Karkat Vantas proposes a solution that will benefit them both. Can the Sollux keep it together or will he implode with embarrassment?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. The proposal

**Author's Note:**

> Sexy times start in Chapter 2, Chapter one is setup and fun stuff.  
> Karkat and Sollux hiss at each other like flustered Hedgehogs.

The drones were here.

They’d been on the ship for 48 hours, with one 24 hour cycle to go. Sollux usually complained that the ships sensory equipment was too limited, now he was having the opposite problem. Drone musk, mating pheromones, ‘magic mist’, the ship was saturated with it. The filtration systems should have kept it out of the navigational systems, but not, those sneaky stinking particles were everywhere. They screamed at him to pay attention to his own embarrassing organic body—the tacky wall fixture engulfed in a mass of bio tech in the power bay.

_Yes, it was that time of the sweep again. The special week when all the good little troll soldiers were visited by magical elves and their buckets of whimsy and stardust! And by elves, I mean 11 ft tall Class A Ferrier Imperial Drones and ‘magic and stardust’ were the colorful concupiscent fluid squirted out of their victims horny bodies._

Luckily they were docked, because he sure as hell wouldn’t be up to navigating the battleship in this sorry state. _I’d be offline for maintenance, whatever that meant._ His pathetic, whiny body was keeping him from synching with the ship. Yeah, ok, he could for a few minutes, but it seemed like every time he tried to review the maintenance logs for hydraulics or interrogate some of the nuttier programs that oversaw the older pure organic systems or the thousands of other things he could only do while they were docked—He’d start thinking about the old days. The two whole sweeps ago when he’d been a troll instead of a space ship. About Aradia or that stupid fling with Feferi, so completely stupid but it had been nice at the time, and just like that his consciousness would snap straight back to the confines of his body. This wasted, sweaty frustrated body demanding his undivided attention.

 _I hate this_ he thought, shifting in the harness, the bio interface obligingly shifted his body into a slightly different position. _I hate my life, I hate this stupid mass pailing orgy, I hate the drones, I hate my own sexual organs. Just..no. fuck all of this._

“Hey, shit stain.”

That got his attention. Vantas, Karkat, audio input, maintenance terminal 1 in the power bay. In the next instant he had a live video feed streaming directly into his brain of the diminutive, frazzled technician from three different angles.

“Sollux” Vantas continued, “A whole gaper full of nonsense just got dumped into the automated maintenance roster. Stop ranting into it, it’s for codes, not half-baked poems glorifying your own idiocy.”

“Oh Fuck you”, he did not need this right now. “I’m the only troll on this ship that isn’t having a pan-wide meltdown from mating hormones.” He felt the tiniest bit of satisfaction when he saw Karkat’s eyes flicker across the terminal’s screen, reading his reply. The stupid pheromones were forcing him to exist mostly in his body, but he was damned if they were going to make him use his mouth to communicate! His brain worked just fine, nothing wrong here. It was just…fucking distracted.

Karkat replied with more audio instead of text input. Weird but ok. “As you can clearly see, I am the only one around to deal with your bullshit today. Everyone else is out there screwing like weasels in order to spasm out enough genetic materiel for two pails.” there were other bits of sound in Karkat’s voice that he couldn’t quite parse. oh yeah, he sounded tired, maybe annoyed. “Only 48 hours left before the big Culling Away party! At least I won’t have to clean up the mess.”

“That would be funny if you didn’t sound so envious.” he snarked, and regretted the comment almost immediately, but only a little.

“Envious?” Karkat snapped back, too quickly. Heh. “Why the fuck should I want anything those drooling temporary slaves have?!”

This was nice in a way, Sollux had to dig out personal databases he hadn’t used in months to keep up with the nuances in this conversation. He had to look up everything coming at him from the visual feed. What was that little pucker of skin an inch above Karkat’s nose that seemed to make his eyebrows tilt toward the ceiling? Sector 15 of database 375 told him that it was sweet, pure annoyance. He could always count on Karkat to be a multidimensional distraction.

Karkat wasn’t finished “Yes, you’ve guessed it, I am feeling an immense amount of envy for those sycophants who must pail or die in the next 2 cycles. I sit before you in abject dismay that the combination of my forbidden mutant blood and the ‘indispensable’ nature of my technical skills has sadly barred me from partaking in this quaint alternian custom!!!”

Heh, a quick check told him that KK’s blood pressure was up and his heart was racing. It was tempting to keep the fight going, but they’d both put up with enough hoofbeast excrement in the last 7 cycles without adding a stupid argument about Karkat’s delusions to the list.

“Fine ok, I know it sucks for you too. At least you can do something about it. These stupid hormones are driving me out of the ship and back into that thing.” Sollux sent a still image of his bio encrusted body to the terminal with a flick of his synapses.

“Oh. That’s right.” The gruffness dropped out of Karkat’s voice.

How annoying. “What’s right?”

“You’ve never been on a ship when the drones have shown up. This is the first time.”

“Brilliant deduction Troll Einstein!” he snapped back. Was that pity in Karkat’s voice? Fuck, that had to be the very last thing he needed today. “Is there some trick to not wanting all these things that I can’t have anymore? No? Then just fuck off.”

Silence. Karkat accessed some kind of regional manifesto on the terminal, Sollux pointedly didn’t care and went back to his aborted attempt to streamline the error reporting system on the ship’s primary oxygen dispersal nexus. Anything to get his mind out of this whole embarrassing—-

“Eridan’s ship is only 6 hours away.” karkat said “There’s still time—”

And all the nice logic structures he’d been looking at faded away as his attention— _all_ of his attention— jerked back to the audio input.

“No.” _hell blistering no._

“The captain gave you written permission to submit material to the drones”

“Shittiest good behavior reward ever.”

“—Doesn’t change the fact that you have an option.”

He could not, literally not believe what he was hearing. “Eridan? I admit that we had something.. disgusting a long time ago. But I haven’t seen him since I was conscripted.”

Eridan Amporra. Arrogant, homicidal, the kind of thing you’d expect from a purple-blood. His romance with Feferi had been a one way ticked to jilted Eridan dramaland. That smug grin, his tone deaf persistence in the face of all logic and reason, he’d been completely in2ufferable! _That time on the beach, when he tried to drown me in the water…_ Sollux vividly remembered when panic turned to anger and the taste of that stone cold royal blood as he sunk his teeth into Eridan’s pristine, rubbery shoulder—

The audio and video feeds faded into sweaty darkness. Nothing was their to distract him from the shudder of need that pulsed through his groin. He felt himself gasp at the unexpected sensation. _Oh god fuck fuck it’s getting worse. So much worse._

He made a few half hearted attempts to resynchronize, but it didn’t take long until Karkat manually reset the connection. He tried to push those black memories away.

“Did that spasm mean yes?” Karkat’s voice asked from the terminal. He didn’t bother trying to reconnect with the video feed.

“no, ii’m 2eriious KK.” The input was sloppy, but he had no more fucks to give about details. At least the link let him feel halfway removed from his body again, even though it kept trying to drag him back down. “All I’d get was a smug, annoyed fish prince who had spent the last two sweeps murdering his way up the ranks.. I know what he’d say and I don’t want to here it.” Eridan would give him insults or pity, probably both at the same time. He mentally cringed at the thought. “I don’t even know how I’d pail anyone, I’m wrapped up in horrorterror appendages that don’t like being pushed around. I can’t even use my own psionics on myself!”

A rattle of static indicated that either the porous grid skin of the sound input device was gunking up again or Karkat had just sighed into the microphone.

“If you paid any attention at all to the list of harness protocols related to your rancid meat body, instead of pretending like you exist as an entity made of fungal circuitry and spectral farts, then you would know that there is a whole range of ways that parts of your carcass can be exposed without taking your boney ass offline.”

Karkat kept going, “The bio arms wrapped around your torso are there to regulate your body temperature and support your weight. So there’s no need to disengage any of your side connectors—”

Sollux couldn’t believe this, Karkat was going into full engineer mode, babbling on about things Sollux already knew if he bothered to consult the right databases. “No, stop. What are you getting at.”

“Look, there are….ways. To…shit,” Karkat began, was he actually hesitating?“This is going to sound crazy but it’s not. The solution is so standard that it might as well have an imperial fleet serial number branded to its nonexistent physical casing-”

Oh god, this was going to go on for sweeps. “Stop beating around the suburban lesser barrier plant and just tell me!” he demanded

Karkat snarled at him, probably. “What I mean is, I added a mod to the harness’s protocol core that does several important things, most have to do with the facilitation of concupesient relations with another troll.”

 _Hell. No._ He instantly knew where this was going. “More mods from your good friends at the helmsmen preservation society?” Sollux hissed, he didn’t want any part of this, he scrapped all thoughts of seadwellers, pointy teeth and the phrase ‘pailing protocols’ and focused one of the few remaining shreds of logic in his organic mind circuits on being a spaceship. 

“-Quiet, I’m still talking.” Karkat said.

Apparently the anger cleared his head enough to multitask. Now he didn’t even have the option of tuning the idiot out.

The harness software, a kernal of out-of-the-box standard helmsware surrounded by a tangled web of modifications, tweaks and completely original programming courtesy of this diminutive, shouty asshole and his fellow hobbyists on the fleet interweb. He sifted through the tangle looking for the most recently installed files. Meanwhile, Karkat was still talking-

“—This program also lets you pail without another troll. So you don’t have to exist as a miserable wreck for the next 24 hours.”

The program was buried and coded, he hated it, hated the presumption, but most of all hated the fact that the harness was the only system on this whole ship that he could not manipulate. It was hard coded into the wetware, there were no workarounds. At least he could look at it.

Sollux tore into the program with his awareness, trying to figure out how it worked. He got as far as the perimeters for two very different temporary mutations specified for two maintenance tendrils—and very detailed specifications on how these new specialized peripherals should interface with his own—— _fuck._ His bulges engulfed by one of them. Squeezed so _tightly…_

His body dragged him back down into the overheated darkness of his own flesh sack. He fumbled for the input feed, but the hazy matrices of the ship were gone from his awareness. Every piece of attention was taken up by an incredible need rolling around in his body like the baseline in high clown opera. He needed sex, he needed to pail, those impulses repeated over and over again in wordless growls inside his gigantic mutant brain. _It would doable, it’s not like I can see anything anyway._

 _“_ Sollux—” The voice sounded so loud and nuanced against the whirl of his own thoughts. It took him a moment to realize that he was hearing KK’s voice through his ears instead of the audio centers of his brain. “—you dropped of the system. Just stop growling and listen—”

“No, you listen!” was that his voice? God, it sounded like someone’s lunch that got left near the primary heat vents for two weeks, if lunches could talk—fuck no that was a terrible metaphor! It pissed him off that this dried up loaf with a crust of dehydrated mucus was the only thing he had to communicate with—This grating, wheezy noise contorted into words.

“There are 245 separate components of this harness. It feeds me, sleeps me, regulates my blood pressure, supports my weight and shifts me around like a fucking puppet so I won’t atrophy. And now—” he took a ragged breath, air flooded his disused lungs. his head spun from too much oxygen which somehow annoyed him even more then the sound of his own voice.he could feel the system cease oxygenating his blood directly. How fucking considerate! He rushed ahead after a small coughing fit—if Karkat started fussing over him—he was going to find a way to murder literally everyone on this ship. “Now you want my harness to fuck me? The only thing resembling a matesprit that I get to have is my loving, attentive spaghetti prison??? I don’t care how many ‘5 star’ ratings the helmsblock bonsai association of smug pseudo radical dribbleshits gave this bastardized program. I’m not pailing it!”

Karkat’s answer was immediate, “Fuck you and your over dramatic bullshit! You’re so desperate that you can’t even hold the connection between your brain and the terminal 30 feet away! When the hell did I say that this mod was supposed to be your pretend matesprite?!You might want me to take a machete, hack you down from your ‘spaghetti prison’ then carry you like a delicate oceanic courtesan to the concupiscent partner of your choice but that will only happen in some dark, squishy crevasseof your projected brain./ Reality says that you are stuck in the harness until you die or get transferred to an even larger spaceship. My solution will satisfy all your primal cravings and insure that you don’t lose your mind in the next 24 hours—.

“-Yeah, because you already drop-kicked it into the next sector with this pile of grub casings your shoveling onto my arrival platform!”

“Oh my bad, let me clear the way for all these trolls lined up to pail your bony ass!.”

“Yeah, isn’t it great how you just installed molestmyhelmsman.ath onto my tentacle suit? Now no one will be disappointed because they don’t have access to my sexual organs!” Sollux was angry but felt a jolt of satisfaction that his cracked dusty voice could still convey sarcasm.

“Oh haha, you figured out my ‘evil’ plan!” Karkat shot back with his own. “I will pimp your duplicitous mutant bulge out to the highest bidder and use the resulting gigantic pile of treasure to bribe my way into a cushy station job. What the fuck are you thinking?!” No, why would you think I’d let anyone else know that it exists?”

“Maybe you just want this choice piece of postieur cushioning all to yourself.”

“How in the red and blue flashing fuck do you come up with these narcissistic flights of mental diarrhea? Maybe, just maybe I’m trying to make your existence slightly less shitty for half a fucking second?? Maybe I AM a self righteous asshole with his head shoved so far up his nook that the only thing I can smell is shame for the rest of eternity. But maybe I’m just a troll who is in the exact same situation as you, without the decent excuse of being stapled to a computer system. I can’t submit material to the Bucket Brigade, and you are exempt because of your status as the brain for a spaceship.”

 _What?_ Sollux tried to shift gears as the conversation went from angry squealing to..something more serious.

“So unlike every other piece of flesh fodder on this ship, we could pail and dump all the slurry down the disposal tube for all anyone would care.”

 _Again, what?_ If Sollux’s anger was deflating like air out of a punctured balloon.

Karkat continued, “Maybe this same troll is a bottled up wreck of material and longing who doesn’t trust anyone else on this ship to save his place in the gaper line, much less touch him intimately.”

“So yeah.”

This was actually happening, somehow. “You want to pail me?” Sollux asked, just to make sure.

“Would it really kill you to consider it?” Karkat blurted out, “I mean—”

“Ok.”

Sollux could almost feel Karkat stop dead in his verbal tracks. His rusty imagination dredged up a vague image of Karkat staring at him in disbelief. _Heh._

“What?” Karkat asked, his voice went up a few octaves.

_I’m with you, KK, I can’t believe this is happening either._

“Let’s do thiis.”


	2. Touch Me

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sexy times ahoy!

“Ok,” Karkat said “Um.”

Sollux didn’t answer, he was presently a tangled mess of anticipation for the upcoming alien experience that he barely remembered until this ship-wide biological event started.

The mesh of flesh that encased his body started to retreat, he didn’t even have the willpower to monitor the mod as it ‘reconfigured’ his harness. The fifty jillion individual bio tendrils receded from—-fuck, some unknown percentage of his body. They felt, sensual? Almost sensual, as they slowly moved across his skin into their new configuration, he shivered a little at the unfamiliar sensation. Something bubbled in the back of his mind. Karkat needed to be closer, much much closer.

“KK, quit gaping at me and get over here.” he probably looked like something out of fetish porn.

“Shut up.”

Movement, and he was—somehow—probably had the harness generate a maintenance platform—inches away. The heat wafted off of his body onto Sollux’s naked skin. God, damn. He would give up his upgraded propulsion system and auxiliary memory drive just to have the source of that heat touch him, just to feel the outline of hands on his body…..

“Are you embarrassed by my naked tentacle body?” he almost choked on the words. Keep it together Sollux, he tried to make his words into some kind of dare, maybe annoyance would help Karkat overlook what an awkward mess everything was…

“Yes, and this is the sound of me gagging at the sight of your limp rubbery meat husk.”

Then Karkat kissed him.

It tasted so good, insanely good. Fleshy and hot and so alive and real—two hands rested gingerly on his chest. Sollux leaned into the kiss, he was not prepared for how amazing this would feel. He leaned forward, too fast, trying to somehow get closer to KK. Suddenly a crack and a blossom of pain on his forehead. His gasp ended with a yelp.

And the perfect moment was shattered like brittle hull plating in a meteor shower.

“Ow fuck!” KK exclaimed.

Sollux cringed with embarrassment because hell if he could remember how to suppress the outward expression of emotion by his meat body anymore.

“Oh fuck, Sollux? Maybe this is too much to ask of either of us.”

_What?_

“What are you talking about?”

“Look, you’ve been a spaceship for almost half a sweep. This whole thing was a stupid idea.. to ask you to participate in this act of futile procreation..”

He literally could not believe the sound waves assaulting his sponge clots. “No??!?!”

“You’re blind and mostly immobile, we sure as fuck can’t take the helmet off. The balance of power is piled high in my favor. I could fuck you up without even trying.”

“I’ll take that risk. Seriously KK, this whole line of reasoning is clownfroth even by MY standards!” he literally could not believe this. “Trust me, I will tell you if you hurt me by accident. Just because I can barely move my body doesn’t mean I’ve become some kind of passive tool.”

“Congratulation on your certainty. Maybe I’m having a harder time with this then I thought.”

_Oh._

Something inside Sollux’s chest squeezed shut. His mind was suddenly dead calm and panicked at the same time, His brain could never pick just one emotion—that would be two easy.

“If you don’t want to..to go through with whatever the hell this is then put me back. Please put me back in my platonic tentacle nest and we can pretend like this never happened.”God what was wrong with him? He should be yelling at KK for jerking him around like this.. But all he wanted to do was crawl into the innards of the main arterial bio and hide there for the rest of the peregine.

“Fuck, that’s not what I meant—” The warmth was back “I mean—” An odd tug near his breastbone signaled that Karkat was fiddling with one of his monitor connectors, What a doofus. “Sollux, how do you feel about me?”

Sollux had given up trying to find any logic and reasoning in this conversation. If KK wanted to die of secondhand embarrassment, then who the fuck was he to stop him? “Fine, my feelings.” he said flatly, “I want to feel your hands—your mouth—. So badly that I barely know what we are talking about because you’ve changed the subject at least 3 times and all of them have been like some jarring form of whiplash on my psyche.” he had to pause for breath, a quick gulp of air. “Everything is so excruciatingly simple—-Do you, Karkat Vantas, still want to jump the bag of skin in protruding bones that I reside in?”

To his complete amazement, Karkat didn’t hesitate to answer.

“Yeah.” he said, his voice was unreasonably soft.

Whatever had shut down in Sollux’s chest cavity, was that his heart? _squeezed_. An sharp pulse of feeling just radiated outward through his nerves in a tiny explosion of pure _intensity_.

“Then touch me.” Sollux said flatly. “I am literally going to override the docking clamps and fly this overgrown bucket of pheromones into the sun if you don’t touch me right now!”

———————————————————————-

Normally Sollux didn’t need eyes, at least not to see with. They were his primary power conduits, his brain’s gateway to every part of the ship. He could use them to access any camera or viewport, pull up any display or onboard interface with only a thought. But right now, Sollux couldn’t bring himself to go hunting for those connections. He hung there in the humid darkness, wishing with every inch of his ragged body that he could just WILL the goggles away and look at the troll who was pressed up against him. Goddamnit he was so warm.

The ‘threat’ worked, Karkat’s earlier hesitation melted away. He shifted and his wiry hair ticked Sollux’s exposed chin. The tip of his ear rested on his cheek before sliding away. Lips pressed again his neck, Sollux was caught by surprise when a row of little sharp points nipped the side of neck. His whole body tried to jump at the sensation.

“You bit me—I felt that.” he said, dumbfounded.

Karkat chuckled. “Don’t sound so shocked, your whole neck isn’t covered in bio.” He gently nibbled on the same exposed spot to prove his point. “There’s a five inch gap between the tip of your shoulder harness’ core line and the oxygenation tendril that’s stuck to your left neck artery.” he whispered in his ear.

Oh my god. “Because technical descriptions of my bio hardware are such a huge turn on.”Was that Karkat’s version of dirty talk—-fffff

His thoughts scattered like insects when Karkat blew a steady stream of air on that little triangle of bitten skin he had so carefully described. The touch of air was so soft, it was nothing compared to the pressure of the biotec that surrounded him. But that sensation was so fucking _real_ —. He shuddered again. Sollux wanted to kiss that smug bastard again, but the awkward memory of their blind collision stopped him. That had been so unbelievably embarrassing.

Karkat’s body pressed against his own, slowly; careful not disturb the parts of the harness that were still hooked into Sollux’s body. There were no little sparks of pain or uncomfortable tugs on his skin. Sollux had to remind himself that KK had been a organitech for the last sweep, he knew what he was doing. Even he had to admit that technical competence was sometimes sexy.

KK’s nimble hand tracked its way around Sollux’s chest. Ghosting around the edges where bio met flesh, while his teeth worried the edge of Sollux’s newly exposed ear lobe, then neck, then mouth—but not long enough. The other hand gently but firmly pressed his bio-covered skull down into a long kiss. It was weird, but the ability to tilt his head made him feel more like a person. Computer systems didn’t have neck mobility. He leaned as much as he could into the urgent kiss. It wasn’t much, but enough to make Karkat squirm with surprise. He grinned a little around the technician’s mouth but didn’t break away. KK’s mouth was too hot and delicious to relinquish just like that.

The small hand stopped exploring the nooks and crannies of his upper connectors and slid down his gaunt chest. Slowly, savoring the feeling of his skin. Sollux felt something akin to panic as those fingers played over the ridges of his ribs. A spasm, the flutter of a wing. The sensation, god so many sensations absent for so long. It wasn’t fucking fair, he made a little noise somewhere between an exclamation and a hiss.

“Heh, You still ticklish Sollux?” Karkat murmured near his left ear.

“Go die in a Fi-rrr.” he lost control of that sentence when that little shit maggot assaulted his side again with wiggling fingers. “I swear on the mother grub’s all-seeing antennae I will—” he trailed off as the hand retreated, no, both hands—down his sides, over his stomach. Then there was no more KK to kiss, his warm breath was replaced by empty air.

No time to complain, A faint puff of breath on his abdomen was Sollux’s only warning, his breath hitched. A wet line of heat went slowly down the center of his body stopping just above his sheath.

 _Oh god.._ he could feel it start to pull back.Basic instincts had grabbed ahold of his lower body, he was starting to open up. Sollux shuddered. “KK..?”

For once in his life, Karkat was silent. Those small hands were on his inner thighs, pushing his legs apart a little more than they already were. _Oh my fucking god_ His whole body tensed with anticipation. He didn’t know—didn’t remember what to except, it’d been so long—.

A little white hot line flicked across flicked across something—down there, something really fucking sensitive in the hot confusing mess between his legs. “nnngh, was that—your tongue?” he asked.

Karkat couldn’t answer this time, his mouth was busy with other problems. The hot line returned an instant later, it prodded the epicenter of whatever was throbbing—his sheath?

Then his whole internal world jerked. His bulges surged out of his body like shortrange fighters—with ferocity that would have been disturbing if he cared at all in that moment.He moaned and rolled his hips forward. God, it felt so good let them out. Even KK’s muffled surprised gurgling and the pinprick of teeth barely registered in his grateful brain.

Two bulges, each one with millions of nerve endings that could operate independently. Now every sensation was in stereo. He felt around the curve of KK’s jaw and the beginnings of his scratch black hair with aching clarity, at the same time he was surrounded by wet, loose warmth buffeted by that that same tongue that had taken him apart a moment earlier. But then he was trapped between callused fingers and yanked from the warmth. Not so bad, he slowly caressed the cartilage near the tip of Karkat’s ear. _I can touch things!_

“Sollux, you stupid fuck.” Karkat’s voice trailed off in a low sigh, as he tilted his head so that Sollux could feel around the rest of his ear. “mmmm…stick that thing down my ear canal and I will end you.”

Sollux smiled, Yeah, there was a building need in his gut to plunge his bulges into something tight and deep—and soft, but more important was the need to touch KK’s face with the only pair appendages still under his control.

KK tensed, “—Sollux, I swear if you decide to enact some twisted kink on me—”

This was so awkward that it was almost funny. “Relax, your ear tunnel is safe. Remember that whole conversation about me having absolutely not power to do anything to you because I’m entangled in navigation meat? That didn’t stop being a thing. If my arm was free—hell, if my hand was under my own control then I—.” his bony hand on Karkat’s face, no slime between the pads of his fingers and the other’s skin. He could slide his hand around to that scratchy hair and slowly guide Karkat’s head closer—. The need/image was so sudden and vivd that Sollux had to choke back another moan. “—Lets just forget about all the things I could supposedly do because none of them are going to happen.” he finished lamely. 

A little space of silence. “Not a chance.” KK’s words vibrated across the tip of his bulge,“What do you want to do to me?” his mouth was so close.. Sollux was willing to swear in a imperial court that Karkat was biggest fucking tease on the entire ship.

Sollux licked his dry lips. Karkat didn’t move, he was waiting for an answer. “Oh fuck you KK, fuck you and your stupid mind games. I just—want to— my stupid bulge just wants to crawl back inside your mouth because it’s so right—”

His words cut off when a hand closed around his squirming bulge. Wet lips gave it a gentle kiss, like it had just won the favor of a princess. Most gallant bulge in the whole fucking kingdom.

He almost jerked out of his mainline spine connectors when Karkat’s mouth engulfed him a second time. _Oh god, oh my fucking—._ A small hand pressed against his bio-encrusted ribcage as if to say “Don’t you fucking dare give me an hour extra repair work because of your perverted need spasms.”

Sollux leaned as far forward as the harness would allow. His breath was coming fast, he couldn’t think straight, a jumble of sensory input poured over him like a spasmatic tidal wave. The coarse feeling of KK’s hair steadily brushing against his exposed abdomen, the soft edge of karkat’s jawline and the tiny creases of his neck against one long, skinny bulge while a steady hand wrapped around the base of the other so it wouldn’t jump down his throat, and the rest—the rest—.

So wet and just god-fucking-glorious. Karkat’s tongue firmly pressed his twitching bulge against the roof of his mouth. He could feel the subtle ridges of KK's mouth as the tongue slide rhythmically over his bulge's length. Sollux moaned long and low, he arched his bulge, trying to get further inside. There was so much hitting him all at once at the same intensity of an ship-wide executive system override. He could feel faint impressions of his teeth behind KK’s curled lips— The hardness, the heat, the conflicting textures, the pressure and motion on his overly sensitive bulges was almost too much. He knew he could let it go, just feel and not try to understand the hows and whys. But no, not going to happen. He wanted to remember everything in excruciating detail.

Connecters tugged at his thighs as he tried to move his legs further apart. If he could just rest his hand on that head and curl his fingers through that unruly hair.. “—/I just want to,” he had to gasp for air again, there wasn’t enough air in this whole helmsbay to keep him oxygenated while Karkat was sucking so hard on the tip of his bulge. “-I want to tear myself out of this ostentatious tentacle suite and throw you down on the metal floor. Then I’ll ride your bulge so long and so hard that you’ll have to drag your half dead carcass back to your respite block on your fucking elbows!” He was surprised at the harshness of his own voice.Just the idea of straddling Karkat, nude and free and not half encased in the harness was enough to make his nook spasm open with a rush of heat. More nonsense escaped from his sorry talk portal—High, short meaningless vowels as little sparks raced up his nerve endings. The background ache of his nook was now hogging all of his attention.

“Please.” he gasped. His nook had been asleep and now it was awake and fucking hungry—Rolling spasms clenched around a phantom of his imagination.

There was a weird little snort from Karkat, probably the only way he could laugh through his nose.

One of his calloused, damp fingers ran down the very base of his lower bulge, it jerked a little at the touch, all the way down to where it disappeared into his body. He tensed in anticipation. Oh god, his nook felt like it was open wider than the ship’s bay doors. Air moved past his narrow bulge as Karkat drew a shuddering breath. It took his last shred of concentration to keep it still—this was not going to end with Karkat choking on his hyperactive love tentacle.

He felt like he was forgetting something, but before he could examine that vague thought, the finger slid into his nook. The cargo bay was full. A whole series of muscles that Sollux did not remember having squeezed tightly around KK’s single digit. KK took a little more of his bulge into his mouth. The same tongue that had traded insults with him for years was sliding across his bulge in perfect synch with the tiny-huge finger stroking the inside of his clenching nook. Sollux started to rock again. He marveled dumbly at how well it fit—how tight it felt. Was Karkat’s finger designed to be inside him? God, he could feel the creases of his knuckle as he withdrew. No no that was no good/for the love of fuck that was not acceptable!.

The finger was back except it was much bigger—- no, two fingers this time. Some other thought that wasn’t sex with Karkat urgently tried to get his attention. _No, I am not listening to you, you are not going to jerk me out of this moment with your hyper-vacillating bullshittery_ — a stab of pain caught him by surprise. He froze. It was barely more than the pinch of a side connector jerked out during maintenance, _oh my fuck how could I forget about that?!_

“Karkat! stop stop we can’t—-” Karkat froze, Sollux hurried ahead before even one word tumbled out of Karkat’s mouth. “My 2tupid fucking bulges..” he spat, “they take up 2 much space. There’s no room for—FUCK.” his face was a mask of heat. The fingers withdrew, his bulge slid out of the heat of Karkat’s mouth. He wanted to curl up somewhere and die.

“Sollux, are you—”

“My nook is too small, we can’t pail.” he murmured. Memories of the last time he and Feferi had tried bloomed in his mind. My god, that had been a disaster. He didn’t even want to think—didn’t want to trigger the synapses responsible for maintaining every ounce of embarrassment and shame with perfect clarity of that night. The silence stretched on for hours. Probably.

“KK?” his own voice sounded louder then the primary containment alarm. So intrusive and awkward, like the biggest, brain-addled tool that ever had the fucking nerve to be vacuum sealed to a space ship. _Why the fuck did I do that, why? So stupid! Beg Karkat to fuck me then oh wait, I forgot that my mutant body can’t satisfy either of our primal needs._

Even after the scare, his body wasn’t ready to give up. No, fuck his body. HE didn’t want to give up. The basic need to empty and be filled thrummed relentlessly from gut to groin. He took a breath and tried to clear his thoughts, but it was futile. What was Karkat doing? Was he silently laughing over this..this disaster? He hadn’t moved. Still there, still warm. Sollux felt a few small movements. He could just here the slightly a-rhythmic tapping over the hum of the ship— Wait, was he using a Keypad?

“I do not believe this kk, are you shitting me?”

“What.” the reply was terse and distracted.

More tapping. A wave of horror hit him in the face. “You’ve paused the most embarrassing moment of my life to consult that fucking chat room?!” Sollux could barely believe his own words.

“Just keep a lid on your goddamned betrayal aneurysm for one second—”

“Oh fuck you! Why don’t you snap a photo of me naked with my bulges trying to tie themselves into a knot as proof of the ‘malfunction?!’” somehow his atrophied vocal chords were still capable of making too much fucking noise.

Karkat huffed. “I was looking up your medical records, you reactionary flesh pinata.”

 _Oh_. Why was he so relieved, what the fuck did it matter anyway. He was a spaceship. He didn’t care if KK had paused to complain about his flighty helmsmen’s faulty biomechanics to the chuckleheads on that insipid chatroom..

Karkat continued. “They did a soft tissue scan of your body right after installation— The 3D model has all of your abnormalities itemized and tagged—.” He trailed off, more tapping.

He was blind, but his mind could still put together an image of Karkat kneeling in front of him, totally engrossed in some fucking medical report, with Sollux’s material drying on his face. He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Nothing had changed, but he felt so obscenely exposed; this was so ridiculous and pathetic.

“My nook is on the ship’s database? No, don’t answer that, of course my nook and all of it’s class-S abnormalities are on the ship’s database.” he wanted to scream anddidn’t quite no why. “I’m sure that would be an excellent topic for your dissertation, Professor Vantas—”

“Sollux—” the hate for Karkat’s exasperated/patient voice almost overwhelmed his need to form coherent words.

“—But this specimen would like to remind you that he is currently a quivering lump of feelings and is in no way capable of dealing with being treated like a fucking science project right now!!!” he shouted. Everything was just so painstakingly intolerable. It was always like this, more lab tests, more measuring and monitoring, handlers frowning at his vital statistics while he just hung there… Can’t even be a troll, even for a little while..

“Sollux, fuck.” movement. The weight of Karkat’s body was back. Something hot dripped down his cheeks. Little rivers—-. It was the equipment, the harness, 2tupid thing was always leaking.

A little hand was on his face again. Karkat’s thumb swept away all that shitty leaking biofluid. Connecters tugged on his neck as he turned his head away from the hand. “No, Sollux. I’m not leaving it like this, not leaving you or me in this state. We’ve both had too many shitty days to add this one to the pile.” Sollux didn’t move, he tried to hate the softness in Karkat’s voice, but it was impossible.

“I can fix this.” the idiot sounded stone cold certain. His breath brushed the tip of Sollux’s nose. “But I need your help.” The last was so quiet, like KK was whispering directly into his brain—or his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies to Karkat for having to do all the work, his paramour is a little tied up at the moment.


End file.
